DANCING sky?) Whatever-she transformed her- selL became human and serious. And in the intimate, we've-been-together-for-a- long-time pas de deux that Tharp, icon- oclastically; set to the second movement (that's the part where Massine had the Descent from the Cross), Whelan was not just human and serious but also sexy: Strands of her hair came loose. Her moves unwound like thoughts. There 95 Tharp has no truck wIth such por- tentousness. Her piece is about freedom and order. What that means is that here, as in most of her pieces for ballet com- panies, she very knowingly mixes the nile-driven danse d'école with a lot of un- ruly stuff: jazz, boogie, and ordinary move- ment, too. (One dancer, whose partner is busy doing a solo, stands there with her hands on her hips-"When's he coming back?" -until he finishes.) The ballet has no story, just three dif- ferent couples, plus ensemble, in three different moods. The opening section is a winsome an- nouncement of the piece's eclec- ticism: Peter Boal, a very pure classicist, trying to do what looks like a combination of disco and Irish step dancing-some ballet, too-with Jenifer Ringer. The second movement is a walking duet for Wendy Whelan and Nikolaj Hübbe. In the third move- ment, Damian Woetzel and Mi- randa Weese tear around and have fun. All three couples, and the corps, make common cause in the final movement, so freedom becomes order once again. What in Massine was a proclamation about human fate is, in Tharp, something more agnostic: a story about individuals but with a sort of faith in underlying concord. Which would be fine if it were interesting. One person, Whelan, does make something out of it, but then Whelan makes some- thing out of everything these days. Who knew, when this skinny girl started dancing with New York City Ballet in 1984, that she would eventually be a star of the Wendy Whelan and Nikolai Hübbe: Whelan has become human and serious, and, in this performance, sexy. company? No one, and no one could have imagined it, for, at that time, were catches in her breathing. Look- N.Y.C.B. was still consecrated to the ef- ing at her, we saw our other life, our fulgent female image-part angel, part buried life, the life we live in the theatre. movie queen-that Balanchine placed Who did this, Whelan or Tharp? at the center of his work. Such an ideal Both, obviously. But nothing else in was the farthest thing from the clipped ".The Beethoven Seventh" came within competence that Whelan showed as a miles of it. Boal and Ringer mainly young dancer. But in the decade that fol- struggled with the partnering. Damian lowed Balanchine's death, in 1983, that Woetzel got to do the sort of butch ac- female image, with no one looking for robatics he is so good at. (This time, he it, no one fostering it, began to shrink. spun on his stomach.) Yet only Whe- Q And suddenly, about five years ago, lan's performance had any progression, Whelan began to grow. I don't know any build. Tharp didn't seem to try. Did how; these things are personal. (She got New York City Ballet, home of the great @ a new boyfriend? She read Dostoyev- Balanchine, give her the jitters? (She al- .).-to.;' J\. ::: '.:' \/:" :" ;: ",-;'\. " ':\ ) . ,. : , , "L.\ >" .;! ':: ;2::;ø '. : ,,",;*'.. ,!,', ",f." . ," ,',,:';. ',',' "."1,.' .. :<:: ":, : './;':,: ' ," ": '.."/ ,/1:' ,-<; .. .a : ,',; . ........ .. "... :;, -.,. :....-... .. . <J .\ R\í?-rt ways makes American Ballet Theatre, home of lesser choreographers, look at least glamorous. But then she has worked with N.Y.C.B. only once before, whereas she's made thirteen ballets for A.B.T) Isaac Mizrahi, usually a superb ballet costumer, supplied the bizarre outfits, layered things of bras and tights and tarlatans and God knows what. The musicians played the Beethoven well, which almost made up for what they did to T chaikovsky and Brahms earlier in the week. As for the company, it is still the strange thing that it has been for the last four or five years- that is, better than what it was in the decade before but neverthe- less in big trouble. There are whole ballets, great ballets ("Episodes," "Stravinsky Violin Concerto"), that you're scared to go see, they've been done so badly for so long now. In others, there are parts where you reflexively tense up- wince, grab the armrest-know- ing that a step is coming up that they can't do anymore. And up it comes, and again they can't do it. Beyond technical weakness, there is the general problem, seas- on after season, of lowered sights: no vividness, no depth, no thought of depth. With the exception of Whelan, Peter Martins' first generation of leading dancers- Margaret and Kathleen Tra- cey, Nilas Martins, Jock Soto, Yvonne Borree--are a tired bunch. (Other, better dancers-Hübbe, Darci Kistler-have been dras- tically reduced by injuries.) We see these people week after week. And then there are the young- sters, the ones who began bright- ening the scene a few years ago. Maria Kowroski gets better and better. Her natural daintiness is still there, but joined to a new daring. Her scissor kicks in "Mozartianà' could kill anybody who got in the wa Together with Kowroski we now have Jennie Somogyi, all detail, all fullness. And what confidence! She just tucks us under her arm and takes oft She's twenty-two. There are others: Rachel Rutherford, Benjamin Mille- pied, Jared Angle, Janie Taylor. (Why does Taylor look so frightened, though?) These are the lights in the darkness. We watch them joyfully, nervously. .